User talk:Rburdette

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 28 January 2011
Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 00:34, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 13 February 2011
Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 18:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 21 March 2011
Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 22 April 2011
Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 16:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Feedback on Fall 2011 WP training session
This was worthwhile couple of days in preparation for the the fall semester ˜˜˜˜  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lasharky (talk • contribs) 13:47, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

THTR 3130, Fall 2011
Hi, Rburdette. Thanks for the message. I don't like infoboxes. In my opinion: First, they are redundant, and the same information is better given in narrative format in the WP:LEAD. Second, they make the article more difficult to edit, and daunting to even attempt to edit, for newbies. Third, they are the frequent targets of vandalism, and they are almost invariably filled with small errors. Fourth, they distract the editors from focusing on the content of the article; instead of improving the article, they spend lots of time working on this cosmetic feature and its extensive coding and formatting. I recommend against using them, and I particularly recommend against having the students spend any of their valuable time working on the infoboxes. Having said that, the article on Harold Pinter has an infobox, as does the one on Bernadette Peters. Contrast this with the excellent article on Noël Coward, which does not have an infobox: if you look at this, you may agree with me that the infobox is not needed. Best regards! -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:35, 29 August 2011 (UTC)


 * BTW, since the course is about script analysis, I was surprised to see that all the the articles are about actors and playwrights, rather than about plays. Any reason for this, or did you feel that bio articles were more accessible?  There are some good examples of articles about plays, such as Proserpine (play), The Importance of Being Earnest, and Carousel (musical).  All the best!  -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:23, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Student lists on course pages
Hi Rebecca! Thanks for setting up all these LSU course pages! I notice that you have been frequently blanking the /Students subpages. If you don't want the list of students to show up on the main course page, that's fine. However, it's important to have each of the students' accounts linked from that subpage, because that's how we are gathering the usernames of participating students for the Leaderboard. I formatted an example of how you can do that without having it show up on the course page: United States Education Program/Courses/Prokaryotic Diversity (Gary King)/Students. The links to the students' accounts are added between "noinclude" tags, keeping them invisible on the main course page. --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:47, 1 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks much for the feedback on the Wizard! I'll put improving the "getting help" thing on my todo list; changing the image to a button with text on it should be easy.
 * As for the glitch with starting that tab, yeah, unfortunately I can't think of a good way to bypass it. It's been created after you save the first time, but unless you purge the server cache, it will often not register as existing in the tabs interface immediately.  (It will show up eventually.)  Attempting to create the page again (which means you simply saves a blank edit with no changes from the previous version) is one way to purge the server cache.


 * Once the new onboarding portal is ready (through which students can create their accounts), which should be in place by next term, there won't be any need to keep the Students subpages if you don't want them.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)


 * A streamlined process like that is in the cards once the new portal gets built (from what I gather of the plans, the portal is where people with virtually sign the MOU, monitor course activity, and communicate with pod members, all in a simpler non-wiki interface), but it's not in the cards for this term.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Restoring the Students subpages
Sure, I'll do that tomorrow morning now.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:40, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's what I did: except for the one that already was using a Students section, I transcluded the /Articles subpage into the /Students subpage, but kept it inside noinclude tags so it won't show on the course page. So the professors can now just keep using the Articles sections as the lists of students... just try to make sure all the students get listed (and linked to their userpages) on those articles lists, and that no other people have links to their own userpages who aren't students.  Let me know if that works for you, or you'd rather a different arrangement.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:05, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Email notifications about talk page changes
Hi! I replied on my talk page (in case the answer is helpful to others who come bye as well).--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 16:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Survey
Hi Rburdette!

I have put together a survey for female editors of Wikipedia (and related projects) in order to explore, in greater detail, women's experiences and roles within the Wikimedia movement. It'd be wonderful if you could participate!

It's an independent survey, done by me, as a fellow volunteer Wikimedian. It is not being done on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. I hope you'll participate!

Just click this link to participate in this survey, via Google!

Any questions or concerns, feel free to email me or stop by my user talk page. Also, feel free to share this any other female Wikimedians you may know. It is in English, but any language Wikimedia participants are encouraged to participate. I appreciate your contributions - to the survey and to Wikipedia! Thank you! SarahStierch (talk) 21:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Theatre Script Analysis
Hi. I see that the students are moving forward on some of the articles. Please let them know that I am very happy to help them with any formatting or editing questions! Let me know when they are finished with this round of edits, and I'll take a look. Any idea of the current schedule? All the best, -- Ssilvers (talk) 20:21, 21 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The main issue so far seems to be that the students are not putting in enough in-line citations. Also, most of the articles don't *discuss* the plays: they list the plays, but they don't talk much about the playwright's style or give the reactions and analysis of critics to the playwright's works.  Since this is a script analysis course, I would expect to see analyses of the playwright's style and body of work by critics and commentators. -- Ssilvers (talk) 07:08, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Homework Hello
Hi there! I'll be attending the campus ambassador training tomorrow. This note is part of my homework. I'm very much looking forward to the training... thanks in advance : ) Michelev (talk) 22:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassadors update
Hi! You're getting this message because you are or have been a Wikipedia Ambassador. A new term is beginning for the United States and Canada Education Programs, and I wanted to give you an update on some important new information if you're interested in continuing your work this term as a Wikipedia Ambassador.

You may have heard a reference to a transition the education program is going through. This is the last term that the Wikimedia Foundation will directly run the U.S. and Canada programs; beginning in June, a proposed thematic organization is likely to take over organizing the program. You can read more about the proposal here.

Another major change in the program will take effect immediately. Beginning this term, a new MediaWiki education extension will replace all course pages and Ambassador lists. (See Course pages and Help:Education Program extension for more details.) Included in the extension are online volunteer and campus volunteer user rights, which let you create and edit course pages and sign up as an ambassador for a particular course.

If you would like to continue serving as a Wikipedia Ambassador — even if you do not support a class this term — you must create an ambassador profile. If you're no longer interested in being a Wikipedia Ambassador, you don't need to do anything.

First, you need the relevant user rights for Online and/or Campus Ambassadors. (If you are an admin, you can grant the rights yourself, for you as well as other ambassadors.) Just post your rights request here, and we'll get you set up as quickly as possible.
 * Please do these steps as soon as possible

Once you've got the ambassador rights, please set up at a Campus and/or Online Ambassador profile. You can do so at:
 * Special:CampusAmbassadorProfile
 * Special:OnlineAmbassadorProfile

Going forward, the lists of Ambassadors at Special:CampusAmbassadors and Special:OnlineAmbassadors will be the official roster of who is an active Ambassador. If you would like to be an Ambassador but not ready to serve this term, you can un-check the option in your profile to publicly list it (which will remove your profile from the list).

After that, you can sign on to support courses. The list of courses will be at Special:Courses. (By default, this lists "Current" courses, but you can change the Status filter to "Planned" to see courses for this term that haven't reached their listed start date yet.)

As this is the first term we have used the extension, we know there will be some bugs, and we know the feature set is not as rich as it could be. (A big wave of improvements is already in the pipeline. And if you know MediaWiki and could help with code review, we'd love to have your help!) Please reach out to me (Sage Ross) with any complaints, bug reports, and feature suggestions. The basic features of the extension are documented at Course pages, and you can see a tutorial for setting up and using them here.

In the past, the Education Program has had a pretty fragmented set of communication channels. We're trying to fix that. These are the recommended places to discuss and stay up-to-date on the education program:
 * Communication and keeping up to date
 * 1) The education noticeboard has become the main on-wiki location for discussion of the Education Program. You can post there about broad education program issues as well as issues with individual courses.
 * 2) The Ambassadors Announce email list is a very low-traffic announcements list of important information all Ambassadors need to be aware of. We encourage all Ambassadors (and other interested Wikipedians) to subscribe to the list; follow the instructions on the link to add your email address.
 * 3) If you use IRC regularly, or need to try to reach someone immediately, the  IRC channel is the place to find me and fellow Ambassadors.

We now have an online training for Ambassadors, which is intended to be both an orientation about the Wikipedia Ambassador role for newcomers and the manual for how to do the role. (There are parallel trainings for students and for educators as well.)
 * Ambassador training and resources

Please go through the training if you feel like you need a refresher on how a typical class is supposed to go and where the Ambassadors fit in, or if you want to review and help improve it. If there's something you'd like to see added, or other suggestions you have for it, feel free to edit the training and/or leave feedback. A primer on setting up and using course pages is included in the educators' training.

The Resources page of the training is the main place for Ambassador-related resources. If there's something you think is important as a resource that's not on there, please add it.

Finally, whether or not you work with any classes this term, I encourage you to post entries to the Trophy Case whenever you see excellent work from students or if you have great examples from past semesters. And, as always, let students (and other editors!) know when they do things well; a little WikiLove goes a long way!

--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)